New iOS Developer Guidelines Point to Ad Blockers on Apple’s iPhones and iPads

Apple’s unveiled the possibility that ad blockers would be coming to mobile Safari, iOS’ browser, keeping with their WWDC keynote theme of advocating for consumer privacy.

While ad-blockers are now fixtures on the browsers of power users, they’re not as widely used on mobile device — and until this year’s WWDC, they were unheard of on iPhones and iPad that weren’t jail broken. The new “content blocker” extensions laid out to developers at the conference can define what sort of images and scripts will not load.

9to5Mac speculates that the ad blockers could be a play to turn the screws on Google, now that Apple’s plans to break away from the Mountain View’s company services are coming together. Apple now develops and maintains its own map application and the upcoming “Proactive” additions to iOS’ search functions and Siri compete directly with Google Now. (Ad Blockers have been available on Android devices, however.)

Ensuring the blockers play nicely with Apple’s policies regarding apps, however, might also have played a role with regards to how long they’ve taken to get onto Apple’s mobile devices.